Expectations -

Director Ram Gopal Varma is known for making films where one of its main protagonist is highly inspired from a real life character. Right from local politician to police officers, underworld dons, power brokers to local godfathers have been transformed into its cinematic avatar. Though most of his films revolved around the underworld, he also had a fascination of creating a film based on the life of notorious bandit Veerappan. Ram Gopal Varma made ‘Jungle’ where the main villain was highly inspired from Veerappan and later also started a film under his production. Sadly, that film got shelved and finally more than a decade later Ram Gopal Varma returns back to this famous criminal, but this time directly in the form of ‘Veerappan’. Ram Gopal Varma also made this film in Kannada, where it was loved by critics and fared well at the box office. Due to this success there are some expectations from its Hindi remake and a hope of getting one of India’s finest director back to his original form.

Story -

‘Veerappan’ is a film inspired by the life of real life criminal Veerappan (Sandeep Bharadwaj). A special force is set under the supervision of an undercover spy (Sachiin J Joshi) who decides to set up a trap with the help of Priya (Lisa Ray). Priya’s husband was brutally killed by Veerappan, thus, she agrees to give shelter to Veerappan’s wife Muthulakshmi (Usha Jadhav). Priya befriends Muthulakshmi only to win her trust. Finally, Muthulakshmi admits out to Priya about Veerappan and tries to contact him. Priya along with special force set up a trap to catch Veerappan but their plan fails, as Veerappan knew everything about this secret mission. Before they could react back, Veerappan and his men set an attack over the special force team. This does not stop the special force and they plan furthermore to trap Veerappan,
but this time with more secrecy and proper detailing.

The 'Glitz' Factor -

The story is inspired by various books, including ‘Veerappan: India’s Most Wanted Man’ by Sunaad Raghuram. The movie starts with hard-hitting and brutal backstory of Veerappan followed by the killing of the special officer by him. The first half has some brilliant and engaging moments revolving around Veerappan. These scenes, especially the ones in the first half of the movie keeps you engrossed in the film with high amount of curiosity factor attached to it. The locations are outstanding, especially in the chase scene before the interval. There are many cinema lovers who would want to see this master director Ram Gopal Varma back to his original form. The director keeps showing some sparks in films like ‘The Attacks of 26/11’ or ‘Not a Love Story’, but then films like ‘Satya 2’ or ‘Bhoot Returns’ portrays the bad form of the director. ‘Veerappan’ is relatively a better film than his recent worst ones. The first half is engaging and has a good amount of curiosity level followed by a gripping climax.

Sandeep Bharadwaj as Veerappan is outstanding. One can see the evil in his eyes and expressions. Usha Jadhav lends good support.

The ‘Non-Glitz’ Factor –

The second half slows down with dragging and repetitive scenes. Many scenes are unnecessarily stretched due to which the intensity gets diluted. There are few bad to worse scenes like Sachin Joshiand team trying to torture a terrorist followed by over acting by Lisa Ray. The middle portion of the film just keeps going on and on without anything concrete happening. The whole impact of the film goes down in these portions of the film, which gets mildly restored due to the engaging climax part of the film. The cinematography is average and one can see Ram Gopal Varma’s usage of weird camera angles on a frequent basis. Music used to be one of the key point in earlier films of Ram Gopal Varma, but here, there is nothing to cherish. The background music is jarringly loud. The movie fails to surpass the expectation level, but comes close to it due to the premise. The younger Ram Gopal Varma would have done wonders with this movie. Sachiin Joshi fails to do justice to his powerful role. Lisa Ray hams to the fullest and looks total artificial.

Final ‘Glitz’ –

‘Veerapan’ is mildly menacing instead of an out and out menacing film. The movie had all the potential to become a hard-hitting cult drama if only the screenplay would have been a bit tight and had some better actors to perform.